


the raging heart defends a turning tide

by kimaracretak



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Bargaining With A God (And Winning), F/M, Missing Scene, POV Second Person, Rescue Missions, Resurrection, Trust, Worldbuilding, getting together (again)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-17 00:44:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14822003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak
Summary: Instructions on how to build an empire, with love.Or: Delilah wakes in Marquet, and sets about getting Sylas back.





	the raging heart defends a turning tide

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cadmean](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/gifts).



> Cadmean, you asked in your letter what it takes to build a cult for an aspiring god. I hope you enjoy travelling with Delilah along these first few steps!

Sensation returns first. The scent of pine, tickling your nostrils and curling in the back of your throat. Wood under your hands, so smooth there's no chance of splinters under your nails. Fabric, so much of it: lace against your ankles, velvet on your neck.

And the lights, a thousand pinprick stars enveloping you when you manage to pry your tired eyes open.

In the silence, you breathe in.

And you remember.

You remember the girl who should have been - who _was_ your daughter - standing over you with her sword drawn _and_

You remember Sylas falling, shining, turned to dust as your own heart crumbled _and_

You remember late nights bent over research, his hands firm on your shoulders, Cassandra curled at your feet, Anna cleaning her guns - a family _and_

You remember the very first night in Whitestone, when the future was so, so bright _and_

You remember that you had planned for this.

The coffin lid pushes back easily and you sit up, blinking in the dim light. The basement is quiet - too quiet.

As you take in the small room, you catch a glimpse of your own coffin's twin. Sylas' coffin. If you opened it it would smell of Wildemount, of safety and

You put your head in your hands and breathing doesn't become easier. You can hear the servants moving around upstairs. There's so much to do.

You need a moment to collect your thoughts, but there isn't the time. This isn't the time.

Time has been wrong since the adventurers crashed into your castle, since the orb was set spinning not quite right.

Spinning like your head.

But it doesn't matter. It can't. It's time to face the world again.

 

**

 

The walk up the basement stairway seems the longest journey of your life, longer even than the flight out of Wildemount with arrows at your back every hour. It's wrong, now, to walk alone and to know Sylas isn't waiting for you upstairs.

The door at the top of the staircase opens into a long hallway that spills into the sitting room. An even longer journey.

But you walk, as you must, one foot and then the other, because you are not walking only further into this house you had hoped would never be used but further into a future that does not yet have Sylas waiting for you, and if you think of anything but the forward movement you will be lost. If you think only of the forward movement this will be the only time you make this walk alone.

The curtains over the front window are drawn back, brilliant Marquesian sunlight streaming through the perfect glass and burning your eyes, so accustomed you've become to the clouds. The light is too wrong, the colours too bright, and as you reach up to pull the heavy velvet back into place, a servant girl hurries up from behind to do it for you.

"Our apologies, Lady Delilah," she murmurs. Her hand is warm as it brushes against yours. "We had no word that you would be coming, I'm afraid the house isn't - as prepared for you and your husband as it should have been -"

What right does she have to talk about him? Your new hands have no jewellery, but the crack of your palm against the girl's mouth is satisfying anyway. She takes the slap in silence, wipes the blood into the velvet where it makes the fabric bloom an even deeper crimson.

The servant scuttles off, duty done, and you shut your eyes and allow yourself to sink into an armchair, back to the window. This darkness is comforting, the warm grey familiarity of a secure home, and nothing at all like the harsh black where you awoke mere minutes ago.

Around you the house settles, servants moving with purpose now like they expect Sylas to appear behind them at any moment. Their trust, their fear - this is familiar too. They're not Charmed, no enchantment could survive such distance as lies between Whitestone and Marquet, but still they obey.

You learned this limit the hard way, when you were still a student, learned how the arcane spots and fizzles over the ocean, the water hungrier than anything you had then known, apart from yourself. Later, after Sylas had Turned, after you saw his teeth smeared in blood for the first time, you had understood that together you would be more than a match for anything that slumbered beneath the waves.

Alone, you aren't. Alone, you're an incomplete spell, a broken focus. Alone and angry though ... yes. _Yes_. You broke the world for him once before, and it didn't have the decency to stay broken. Quite the contrary, it had stolen him away again.

Indolent fairy queen of a world her, deserving of little more than teeth at her throat. You know better this time, have better allies. You're no desperate girl, cradling a cold body and screaming helplessly into a storm you weren't sure would answer. Now the Undying King is fully on your side. The portals are open and he _owes you_.

This time you will win Sylas back with your own strength. This time the world will not recover.

The strength of that conviction carries you to your feet and then to the singular kitchen, one of the truest marks that this house is nothing like the castle where you once lived. Of course not all of Whitestone's inhabitants needed food, and fewer still needed the type that could be prepared in a kitchen, but the presence of the multiple vast halls had been a reminder of the status you had shed so much blood to claw back to yourself.

Fortunately, perhaps, the kitchen with its crimson-brown clay tiles and blue and gold ceramics bears little resemblance to the kitchen you had had in Wildemount either, in more innocent days when magic had been a curiosity: a lifeline to your political ambitions, yes, but something that could be set aside to simply enjoy Sylas' company.

Small and close, the kitchen still manages to be far too empty. It's warmer even than the sitting room, heat billowing from the oven and crawling under your dress like a particularly unpleasant type of beetle.

The cook freezes at the sight of you - apparently word has already gotten around the house that it might be best to avoid you for the day. Years of training mean you don't roll your eyes at the old woman, merely pluck one of the ripest looking fruits from the bowl on the centre table, and make your way to the door.

It doesn't matter. None of them do.

You promise yourself, as you step outside and narrow your eyes at the glittering palace in the distance, that this house will be the first building in Marquet to fall to ash when the endless clouds finally roll in over the ocean.

 

**

 

You had the foresight to buy a house placed deeply in a residential district, a place where none of the neighbours would bat an eye at a houseful of servants waiting season after season for their busy foreign masters. Once on the sandstone street, however, you quickly discover an additional benefit to the location: the overwhelming presence of uncommanded life fades somewhat, the occupants of all the other grand family homes on the avenue safely tucked away at work, tending bar or lost in the swirl of colours that is the market square, or gambling away their fortunes while pretending to be somewhere else.

It means you are once again alone, and safe from prying eyes, and it's horrifying how quickly you are getting accustomed to saying _alone_ in the privacy of your own head. It feels like a betrayal, no matter how well you know it to be a temporary one.

Your hood is a comfort, both to shield against the sun and to grant some anonymity. You know better than most how servants gossip, and it wouldn't do to make enemies so quickly. Not when some could still become allies with a whisper here and a promise there.

They'll only know your face if your king wishes it, and that only after it's far too late.

One slow circle to get your bearings, and then another to revel in the freedom of being able to move again. You'll need new clothes - mere moments in the desert sun and your blood is already starting to burn under the heavy black fabrics that had served you so well in the frozen north. But for the moment they are mourning clothes, and the physical discomfort by far the easier to bear. Once Sylas is safe you will be outfitted again, together.

He would look ever so lovely in red and gold, your own beloved sun, lethal only to all the pathetic rabble of the living and far more than a match to the one overhead that will soon set for the last time. It's a gorgeous image, and a pleasant distraction as your lungs adjust to the hot, dusty air.

The smell of roasting meat drifts past on a twist of breeze, carried along ahead of the faint chatter of a smaller market. Perhaps that will be the first stop - the sort of reconnaissance mission you haven't undertaken for yourself in years, but one that will be necessary. A power base, after all, must needs have a foundation, and a place where coin is freely traded is as good a place as any to begin.

Of course, you probably won't be able to tell for months which of the rabble will lie on the stones as mortar to be built upon and which will claw their way to the top, earn a place in your inner circle through whispers or skills of their own. On the other hand, it's always possible that there will be another like sweet Cassandra, one whose possibility will cloak them in an uncanny cleverness ripe for the shaping. Not a daughter this time, perhaps, not yet, but you could always do with another apprentice. A tinkerer, maybe, someone to build upon Anna's unsightly machines and infuse them with magic.

The thought is cheerful on a morning that has little else to recommend it, and you leer at a passing cat for the sheer pleasure of having a reason to bare your teeth.

Your first circle of the market is leisurely, simple exploration. You make a point to linger at the stall selling the most expensive fabrics, deep purple silks shot through with golden thread like the sun. The dark-skinned half-elf behind the display cases reminds you too much of the infuriating twins, however, and you move on before it is strictly polite.

It quickly becomes clear that the market is not the pleasant distraction you had hoped - or even a distraction at all. Among the busy stalls you're deathly silent, no one at your side to mock the insufferable shopkeeps, no one who _understands_ your raised eyebrows, no one to compliment you on a job well done. No one even waiting for you at home, like Sylas had on days when the northern sun never set.

At your sides, your hands clench into fists. Suddenly the market seems not a necessity but a curse, something you cannot afford while Sylas languishes behind the veil in your King's realm. Shadows spill from your nails, and you struggle to keep your voice even as you converse with the man behind the kebab stall, pry your fingers open one by one to hand him his coppers.

Anger roils beneath the careful calm of practised nobility, and you step to the side, breathing deep and nibbling at the kebab with as much dignity as you can muster.

Money and mystery. The first seeds have been sown, despite the awkwardness of the timing. At least the presence of a woman alone draws fewer stares here than it would in the north. Now it's simply a matter of one more rotation through the market, the unnatural effort of keeping your heeled boots steady on the sandy ground, and seeing who wants to keep you close. Then you can find your King's temple, and move on to the real business of the day.

One more circuit of the important figures, you remind yourself. Planning, always keeping to the plan. The fabric merchant. A trinket vendor pretending he doesn't know that there are true arcane treasures mixed in amongst the cheap piles of wrought silver in front of him. A human bookseller, old and sun-wrinkled and proud of the spellbooks she carries. Another hooded figure, not quite in the shadows but close enough to it that you can't quite discern the features of the carved wooden idol strapped to their waist.

But you can see clearly enough the spot of yellow-green dashed across the idol's face, lurking slyly exactly where its left eye should be.

It could be a blemish in the wood. It could be the mark of a careless child who shouldn't have been allowed to play with such an object of devotion.

It's the sign you've been waiting for, the sign you had never dared to dream would appear so soon.

It is proof that you have made the right choice, that you have allies here, that you will not start from nothing. Not that there's anything wrong with that, or that you haven't done so before, but now the knowledge is a comfort. You're hobbled enough without Sylas at your left hand, and having somewhere to begin will return him all the more quickly.

The figure turns when you're three stalls away, slips into a gap between buildings that you hadn't seen the first time you circled the market. Someone who knows the city, then. Even better.

Despite the eagerness pulsing in your blood you are unfailingly polite to the remaining three shopkeeps, including the insufferable gnome-child trying to press her candied nuts into your palms. Alliances are one thing, cordial working relationships with the neighbours another. Making friends, indulging children - you hadn't even indulged your own daughter.

Perhaps you should have. The thought has you reaching to steady yourself against the sandstone wall of the alleyway, off-balance from more than the uneven path.

But no. Cassandra had made her choice, had grown up as all children must and in doing so had sealed herself away in a vault of the past, of an ancient bloodline more bones than life. A vault that, for all your skill with life and death, you will never crack again.

Not for her. Not for someone so ungrateful. Cassandra Briarwood is dead, and Cassandra de Rolo as well, at least in all the ways that matter. Her newfound friends will notice soon enough.

Sylas, though, Sylas has a future, one that you will give to him once more.

The determination pulls you from your reverie, and the fog of the past clears just enough that you can see you've lost your erstwhile friend.

 _Here_. The whisper is so near to silence under your muffled swearing that you never would have heard it were it not so familiar. You look up and, almost hidden under the glint of the noonday sun, you see a green-grey hand wrought in ashy vines clambering up the side of an otherwise unremarkable building at the corner of the next intersection. It's not an unthinkable sight, Ank'Harel is an oasis that shelters more green that it ever would dare to display, but at the sight of your king's symbol a relief more profound even than that you felt upon waking floods you.

More than relief. _Safety_. Here you will find Sylas, reassure the worshipers already in place, then build an empire from the ones who will be carefully shown the truth.

Here you will thrive.

 

**

 

Entering the sanctuary feels like entering the caverns under Castle Whitestone for the first time. The absolute dark is broken only by the green and gold globes of dancing lights tumbling lazily along the walls like so many dust motes. The whispers start as soon as the door slams shut behind you, descending in a comforting cloak over your shoulders.

You would conjure light, but it seems uncouth in the face of your King's obvious presence. It's stronger here, stronger than it's been since you awoke, and for the briefest moment you have to tamp down a surge of excitement that he's here, that it worked - manners may be a slippery thing these days, but you will not surrender your remaining decorum so easily.

The figure is waiting in the corner, patient until your eyes adjust. With their hood thrown back, you can see that they're human, with Marquesian dark skin and eyes - no. Eye. Where their left eye should be is a sunken ruin, long healed scars spidering up their temple from the cavern.

Delight thrills through you. An acolyte. Your acolyte, perhaps, proof that you were right to set up in Ank'harel despite having nothing but rumors, despite the even more vivid rumours of the city's bronze guardian.

"Milady Delilah." The woman's voice is high and light, but you can sense the undercurrent of the arcane in her voice. Like recognises like, though you doubt she's as powerful, and it means that your name in her mouth doesn't provoke quite the same rage that it did when your servant spoke earlier in the day.

"Yes." You have no idea what those in Ank'harel know of you, matters in Whitestone required too much oversight, and teleportation circles were too vulnerable to exploitation, for you to do more than scry on the makeshift temple in the south occasionally. But your face and name clearly command some level of respect, whether or not they know the details of the recently completed ritual.

"You will forgive me if I require some reassurance." The prickling warmth of a Zone of Truth shivers down your spine and pools at your feet before you can do more than lift your hand for a counterspell.

Weak, you think, a resigned smirk curling your lips. Perhaps the druid had gotten deeper in your head than you'd given her credit for. Nevertheless, this may be for the best. It means, at the very least, that these acolytes are some level of competent. Better to reassure them now, fortify their trust later if need be. Sylas will help with that.

"Who are you?" The acolyte is stepping forward, hand tight around the icon at her waist, eyes alight with divine fervor.

A decent question. More meaningful than asking for a name, yet open to more dissembling when posed to a subject under a Zone of Truth. You decide, as you speak, that this woman shows promise. "Lady Delilah Briarwood. Former lady of Castle Whitestone and servant of the Undying King."

"It is you," she murmurs in triumph. "But why did you leave Castle Whitestone?"

A question that requires more thought than its predecessor. "The ritual was completed. There is nothing more that ... that is of absolute necessity there at the moment." Nothing more there that we require, you had almost said, before thinking the better of it at the almost imperceptible tightening of the divine ropes at your feet.

Whitestone is a loss, and you need more residuum, and Cassandra is still a question mark that you greatly desire though you know you must resist. But those all still pale in importance to getting Sylas back.

"But was the ritual successful?" The third question brings you back to the present moment, where the acolyte's remaining eye is narrowed in such a way as to suggest she already knows the answer, and is simply waiting for a final confirmation.

"It was." And it feels good to speak the words aloud, better than you had expected, and to speak them to someone you know shares your fierce joy for the results better still.

The acolyte breathes out in relief, and you suspect it's the first moment she's had to truly relax since the first changes began to manifest after the opening of the Whitestone portal. "Thank you, Milady. I am sorry for the inconvenience. Will you be staying long?"

"As long as necessary." Best not to make any promises under these conditions. "Whitestone is ... unreachable for the moment."

The news pleases the acolyte, you can tell. How long has she kept this temple? How long has she laboured alone?

Before you can give voice to any of those questions, however, she turns to fiddle with the stonework. You can't quite make out the details - for a moment you find yourself wishing for Anna, for a pair of the goggles she kept trying to perfect for the mining work. But the flash of the arcane is unmistakable.

"I'll endeavour to refrain from asking anything else you may be compelled to answer until the spell wears off," she says as she steps forward into what must be a tunnel, something too deeply dark to be a hallway or anything outside. You follow gingerly as the ground slopes downwards, threads of the spell clinging to your boots in a thoroughly unpleasant way, though they don't truly hinder your walking. "In the meantime, I thought you may appreciate a space to meditate, away from the eyes of your servants or the gossip of common prayer spaces you may find deeper in the city."

It is, in its own way, more thoughtful than anything your houseful of trained servants has managed for you, and you feel the beginnings of a strange sort of affection starting to build somewhere deep under your ribs. You push it down: that way lies certain danger, especially with Cassandra's betrayal so recent.

The acolyte leaves you alone, and it is with some relief that you realise you never got her name.

The tunnel is more shallow than it had appeared at its mouth, but the room it opens into is so like the small chapel you had created for your studies in Castle Whitestone that it comes as a near shock. Most of the space is taken up by an altar wide enough to double as a desk, the golden etchings of the Undying King's hand and eye illuminated in the deep green glow of more dancing lights. You cannot tell if the skittering in the corner is your imagination or not.

You're not sure whether you hope it's your imagination or not.

What you are sure of, surer than breathing, is that before you have taken ten minutes to calm yourself down, to stare into the black lit by something more beautiful than stars, is that the shadows are speaking. Their whispering is so deep in your mind that you almost can't disentangle them from your own thoughts, except that they're saying something you would never, ever dare to give voice to.

"You failed."

Your king. Able to speak directly to you know because of your work, rather than remaining trapped in old diaries and statues, the binding of the usurper gods functional out of fear rather than right. Your king, disappointed, and a cold deeper than any desert night creeps through you, draws around your heart.

"No!" The denial is immediate, instinctive, out of your mouth before you've been processed the fact that you're speaking. After everything lost in the caverns under Whitestone, after everything achieved, to hear it termed _failure_ is -

It would be unthinkable. It's unfair, and that perhaps is the worst of all, because while it isn't precisely within the terms of your original plan, neither was Vox Machina. You cannot be expected to work like this.

"It's not a failure." The words are ragged, marked with your failure to get your breathing under control. Far too little has been under your control lately, and this is the worst possible place to show weakness. With an effort, you steady yourself, imagining the firm weight of Sylas' broad hand between your shoulder blades, holding you upright. "If this were a failure I would not be speaking to you now."

There is a long moment of silence, but you refuse to consider the fact that he has abandoned you. When the whispers return, they sound almost disappointed, for the first time. "You underestimate my power, Delilah."

He's never used your name before. It's his, by right of his status, but he's never taken advantage of the privilege before. This, more than anything else, burns in your blood.

"I gave you everything," you say, as the shadowy form flickers. He hears you. He must. Does he care? "This - you're here, you're more than I've ever seen. My Lord." You force the last two words out only by long practise. The respect isn't faked, but the devotion -

No. It too must be true, or you have no hope of concluding this second bargain.

"You didn't give me the girl." _So I took Sylas instead_ , the unspoken secret you are both talking around.

Before, you might have questioned how he knew. Now, you question if he knows exactly how much that specific reminder hurts.

"I gave you her blood. Enough of it." There was more you could have done with the blood of a seventh daughter, especially one that you'd stolen from under the Grey Hunt's nose; more still you could have done had Cassandra remained your daughter with the slivery remains of her free choice. Now all that remains is to free Sylas, who was already so far beyond true and eternal death he couldn't double back, except by the will of a god.

You will ensure that the only god that matters in this moment has only your will.

"And I'll give you something more." Desperation is edging into your voice now, more than you'd ever allow under normal circumstances. But the very air around you is growing heavy with attention now, like he's remembering other claims you made when you where much younger. "I'll give you Vox Machina. All of them."

Something snaps inside you at the words, a crack of lighting final as the last gesture of a spell. Even if he doesn't agree, even if this bargain isn't sealed, there's an arcane weight to your words here that you hadn't fully internalised before and you realise all at once that you've sealed a promise - to yourself, the cave, the king. You will bring him all of Vox Machina. You no longer have the choice.

His laughter in your ears, a sensation more akin to storm clouds than fingers running through your hair. He's listening.

"You're always one for promises," the wind whispers. It curls around you like a physical thing, ghostly fingers settling over the emerald choker that lies across your neck.

He could end you like this. Your mind reels back from the thought almost sooner than it occurs to you, as if it were the thought that were wrong rather the sensation of hands other than Sylas' resting there. Do you trust your king as much as you trust your husband?

You trust him.

 _You trust him_.

Yes. Yes, you trust him. You're most alive when he grants you favours like this. Grants you power. More power than any one person apart from yourself could ever hope to world and live. You would be his hands, his eyes, his mortal queen regnant over a shattered world and -

because you trust him

\- the memory of Sylas one that doesn't even hurt becuase he would have loved this and _you trust hi -_

You trust Sylas.

The vision breaks and you sink to your knees, furious. You vowed once that you would never weep again, but losing Sylas, losing the only possibility you have of bringing him back, after you've promised your service in a geas you hadn't even known you could cast - it's enough to make you wish you could.

Laughter swells around you again, but even in your rage you recognise something different now. "Now, now." The patronising tone seems to bring the walls closer together, the security of the cave becoming claustrophobic. Sharp stones are prickling through your dress, and you don't need to be able to see to know that you're bleeding into the velvet. "I didn't say it was a bad thing."

In a flash of grim amusement, you think that if you had known your king would be so infuriating when given form, you might have reconsidered the ritual.

But no. It had been the price for Sylas' life the first time, and that price, you will always pay.

And just like that, everything's clear. The threads of anger and laughter spin around you, bright as the arcane Weave always is during spellcasting. Your first geas had been unintentional. Could you pull these into another true one, one given weight by your intent?

You trust him.

But you also know his name.

"Then answer me, Lord Vecna." Silence falls and darkness too, so wholly complete that you wonder if this is what Sylas felt when he died. "Will you honour my trust and my service and return my husband to me so that together we may create an empire worthy of you when the time is right? Or will I come to you now, to retrieve him?"

Still silence. You've been aware since you woke up in the basement how alone you were, even amongst the servants and markets and acolytes, but this moment is the first that that awareness has solidified into loneliness, vast and aching and so hollow that you think you could eat and bleed and kill for every moment of the next hundred thousand years and it still wouldn't be enough.

You need him.

Still silence. The blood is beginning to pool under your knees. The thought of failure claws for a moment at your carefully constructed barriers, but you ignore it, trusting your mind to hold. You trust yourself and this - this one is real.

You trust yourself.

 _You trust him_.

And lightning bursts inside you again, sparks in the pit of your stomach and works its way up through your ribs - pitching you forward, scrabbling for purchase until you balance on hands and knees like the basest of supplicants - burns in your throat and forces you to open your mouth so a scream can tear forth.

Almost something physical. Almost a break.

Stones shatter as your hands clench into fists. The lighting spills from your hands, incinerates the remnants into ash in less time than it would take you to blink, if that much of your body were still under your control.

In front of you something tears, and you think for a moment that it's the stone again - but no, not even the portal stone was ever this black. It's the air itself that yawns open in front of you, jagged edges glimmering in invitation.

The meaning is unmistakable. If you are going to have Sylas back, if you are to bring him home at all, you will prove yourself one more time.

You were never tolerant of imperfection, it was one of the things that drew you to Sylas in the first place. It does not escape your attention now that it is imperfections in the veils between planes that are bringing power to the world, Sylas to you.

The edges of the tear are so cold when you reach for them that you're almost uncertain you're touching them at all. Ice blooms across your hand as you hold it carefully still in front of the barrier. You're almost afraid to look directly at the warp and weft, the glimmer of a gate you need to reach through without getting lost within it yourself.

But you can feel Sylas. He's there, somewhere, in soul alone like you'd almost feared he wouldn't be after you watched his body crumble into dust. He's there, beyond this gate - a hole in the Divine Gate or a proper one to the Shadowfell or perhaps the king's realm itself. He's there and you trust him, you trust Sylas, so you press your fingers to the edge of the break in the world and remember the press of his lips against yours and you _pull_ -

\- and with the force of every command you've ever given fuelling this, the most important one, Sylas comes tumbling into a broken world to land at your feet, ready and waiting to be swept into your arms.


End file.
